Page 12 of Road Trip with a Vampire

Six

Dear Miss Watson,

The answer to your question is no. I will NOT return your security deposit once you vacate my property at the end of your lease.

Despite your claims that the fires you set were “accidental” (claims which I do not, incidentally, believe), the fact remains that you have burnt my kitchen cabinets to cinders.

You are lucky I am merely evicting you from my property, not suing you for damages.

Yours sincerely, and get out now,

Mr.Archibald Steves

The following morning, I blinked awake right at six a.m.

I was immediately aware of two things.

The first: My bedroom lights were on. I must have fallen asleep without intending to the night before, without doing any of my nighttime rituals.

The second: My bedroom curtains were on fire.

I leapt from bed, frantic as bright blue flames licked their way up the once-lacy fabric of my now former curtains.

The room was sweltering, the air filling with smoke.

Sweat had plastered my hair to my face and neck as I’d slept.

Beads of it now slid down my back as I stared in horror at what was happening.

This was no ordinary fire. Blue flames burned the hottest, and as an elemental witch, I recognized the tar-black flecks sparking off the curtains as manifestations of raw kinetic energy. Of my raw kinetic energy.

I didn’t have to consult a spell book to know that I had done this somehow. Analyzing exactly how it had happened would have to wait. These sorts of fires spread with terrifying speed. It was only a matter of time before it spread to the rest of the building.

I had to act now.

For the first time since waking, I turned my gaze inward. I was bowled over by the jagged ferocity of the power racing through me. It was a raging inferno of its own, hot and fever-bright beneath my skin.

The need to tap into it was staggering in its urgency.

Ten years ago, when those people had been rushed to the hospital after my terrible prank gone wrong, I’d vowed to never again use magic without thinking.

But the need for expediency was about to make a liar out of past-me.

I didn’t think, didn’t even indulge in one last moment of second-guessing before I lifted my hands and directed a small fragment of my power towards the curtains.

My magic poured from my fingertips like a cool breeze on a hot summer day.

The relief was so immediate, so intense, it left me gasping.

One of my hands shot out to the wall to brace myself so I wouldn’t collapse to the floor as the other directed the current of my power directly at the fire, smothering it in an instant.

When I opened my eyes again, my curtains were a charred, smoking mess. I barely noticed. I was shaking, both because I felt entirely physically at ease for the first time in ages and because now that the immediate danger had passed, the horror of what I had allowed to happen was sinking in.

This fire had manifested because I’d gone too long without using magic. I knew this like I knew my own name. Except this was much worse than that time I’d accidentally set that display of shitty greeting cards on fire.

So much worse.

Because this time, I’d been doing my candle ritual faithfully every night for months. Until last night.

One extra night’s worth of pent-up magic should not have caused… this .

Had my symptoms increased recently? I’d been more distracted since Peter had arrived, but I hadn’t noticed any big changes. All I knew was that if I hadn’t woken up when I had, this could have ended very badly.

I threw open my window to clear the thick, acrid smoke out of my bedroom.

My mind was racing. This fire was a flashing neon sign that my nearly teetotal approach to magic these past ten years had to come to an end.

If the charred remains of my ex-curtains could talk, they would have said loud and clear that my nightly candle ritual wasn’t cutting it.

But how much magic was too much? There had to be a sweet spot between using so much power that my baser instincts took over and I backslid into being Grizelda the Terrible again and using so little that I became a walking fire hazard.

What that sweet spot was, I didn’t know.

I closed my eyes, turning my gaze inward again. The fire, and the magic I’d used to douse it, had used up enough of my power that the nearly ever-present buzzing beneath my skin was gone. Physically, I was at ease. For the moment, that was enough.

A cool breeze blew in from the open window, a sign that the heat wave that had held Redwoodsville in its grip these past few weeks had just snapped.

Lots of things, it seemed, were about to change.

After a quick check downstairs to make sure none of the smoke had made it into the studio—thankfully, none had—I made a beeline for Perky’s.

A doctor would likely say caffeine was the worst thing I could put into my body given how on edge I already was.

But I’d stopped seeing a doctor after I’d outlived my last one a hundred and fifty years ago.

Caffeine helped me think. And I had a lot of thinking to do.

If I was reintroducing magic into my life—and it looked like I was about to whether I wanted to or not—I had to be careful and engage in structured experimentation.

I didn’t quite know how to do this, but I couldn’t do it here.

There’d be no way to keep the existence of witches under wraps for long in this tiny, close-knit community if I was causing magical explosions in my bedroom every night.

To say nothing of what Lindsay and Becky might think.

More to the point—people could get hurt if something went awry as I experimented. This was not something I would risk. I’d never forgive myself if I got lost in my magic again and hurt my new friends.

Maybe some time away from Redwoodsville was in order.

I paused, my hand on the door to Perky’s, as I considered this.

I’d barely traveled since moving here, partly due to falling in love with this little community after a lifetime of wandering, but mostly due to the demands of running a small business.

The two lengthy trips I’d taken since moving here had been visits to a yoga retreat just outside Mendocino, which was only a couple of hours away.

As they had both been work trips, Becky frequently reminded me that neither of them counted as vacations .

Reggie used to joke that the old phrase a rolling stone gathers no moss was inspired by my wanderlust. Perhaps leaving town for a little while could be a way to both shake the dust off my boots and conduct my experiments far from the people I cared about.

No one in, say, Nowheresville State would think twice about it if a strange woman engaged in a bit of pyrotechnics in her motel in the middle of the night.

And if they did, it didn’t matter. The following morning would inevitably roll around, and I’d be gone.

I’d have to check with Lindsay and Becky to make sure they’d be okay running Yoga Magic without me for a while. Somehow, though, I already knew they’d say yes.

It was with this thought in mind that I pulled open the door to Perky’s and stepped inside. To my surprise, Peter was there, sitting at a table in the back that was far from the windows. He gripped a single sheet of paper in his hands, his jaw clenched so tightly I worried he might break a fang.

The last thing I needed was to insert myself into whatever had Peter looking so stressed. I had enough problems of my own.

I headed for his table anyway.

“Zelda,” he said, flustered, when I reached him. He hastily stuffed the wrinkled, obviously much-handled paper he’d been staring at into an envelope. Then his eyes widened as he took me in. “What happened?”

“Do I look that bad?” I’d rushed out of my apartment after getting dressed and hadn’t looked at a mirror first.

He looked me over again, considering. “Yes.”

I rolled my eyes. “Such a charmer.”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “I wasn’t trying to be charming. Only honest.” He motioned for me to sit, and I did, pulling out the chair across from his and flopping down into it. “Your face is streaked with soot, and you look like you’ve seen a ghost. What happened?”

I hesitated. How much of this did I want to get into with him?

“There was a fire in my apartment,” I said. I could tell him that much at least. “I’m okay. Everything is okay. Well, except for my curtains. Those aren’t okay. I need new ones.”

Worry creased his forehead. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes,” I lied.

Fortunately he didn’t push it. His eyes slid away from mine, landing on the envelope he’d been holding when I’d arrived.

I was smart enough to recognize an opportunity to change the subject when I saw one. “What is that?”

“What is what?”

I wasn’t the only person in the mood for avoidance, apparently. “The paper you were staring at when I showed up. The one you stuffed into an envelope and don’t want me to ask about.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Then why are you asking me about it?”

“I’m too nosy for my own good.” And then, in a softer voice, I added, “And because you seem like you might benefit from talking about it, whatever it is.”

He hesitated for a moment, considering. Then he pushed the envelope across the table towards me. It was addressed to him, at what was presumably his new apartment, in elegant script. No name or return address was included.

Every line in his body radiated anxiety. “Open it,” he said.

So I did.

It was a short letter, written in bright red ink, in the same flowing hand that had addressed the envelope.

P—

You have not been replying to our emails, so we are resorting to UNUSUAL methods of communication to reach you.

We understand you needed some time off given how unexpectedly frustrating this work has been, but enough’s enough. We’re starting to worry you’re getting funny ideas. Meet us at the warehouse ASAP or we’re sending someone to get you.

—JR